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I would like to share an anecdote. In March 2016, I was weighing 96 kilograms (211.64 pounds). I made just one change during that time which is to stop having a
by kichuku 9y ago
I would like to share an anecdote.
In March 2016, I was weighing 96 kilograms (211.64 pounds). I made just one change during that time which is to stop having anything with sugar. I continued to take other natural sweeteners like jaggery and honey. The rest of my diet remained the same and my activity level remained the same ( I work in IT as a network engineer in a desk job)
In October 2016, I was weighing 72 kilos (158.73 pounds).
I am still maintaining that same weight between 70 to 72 kilos since then. Incase if it is relevant, I am a 29 year old guy with a height of 172 cm (5 feet 7 inches).
Along with that, I got several other benefits such as being more energetic, not feeling sleepy all the time, general improvement in mood etc.
All this just with stopping of sugar and nothing else changed.
I can share even more side benefits which I got, but it will seem more unbelievable because I have observed that the general population is still unaware of the extremely harmful effects of sugar.
EDIT: I had typed October 2017 when I had intended to type October 2016. It was just 7 months.
- ThrowawayR2 9y ago> I continued to take other natural sweeteners like jaggery and honey. ...which are also 80+% sugar.
- smilliken 9y agoHoney has a lower glycemic index/insulin response than sucrose.
- GordonS 9y agoIt's a bit better than sugar, yes, and I suppose you would tend to eat less honey than sugar. Jaggery though... I can't imagine it has a GI much different from sugar?
- murukesh_s 9y agoI think it's not just about GI, jaggery would have more GI, I am not sure, but you could think of another angle - jaggery is unrefined sugar retaining the dietary fibre - that could result in a lower GI also some other benefits which we might be still discovering. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730183 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730183
- keymone 9y agobut it occupies liver with processing fructose which iirc is disruptive to ketone production and does maintain a level of blood sugar that prevents body from entering ketosis.
- Moto7451 9y agoIf you’re purposefully consuming normal levels of carbohydrates you’re not going to be in ketosis anyways. Unless you’re maintaining a ketogenic diet there’s no reason to worry about your glycosis/ketosis state after a meal. A teaspoon of honey isn’t going to ruin your body. Likewise, if you’re over indulging it doesn’t matter much if it’s “better” sugar or “worse” sugar. I’m willing to bet the poster isn’t drinking a honey sweetened soda.
- eternauta3k 9y agoTherefore you cannot look at each component in isolation.
- m1keil 9y agoCan confirm a very similar experience: a drop of 12kg from 86 to 74. No change in physical activity. Also work in IT. Only dietary difference is cutting out all sugar and as many carbs as I can.
- analog31 9y agoOddly enough, I can share an anecdote too. After a health scare, I decided to change my diet. I didn't think that I was self disciplined enough to count calories, so I arbitrarily eliminated certain things from my diet, most notably butter. My exercise didn't change much: Cycling to work every day. I got a new bike, but it didn't make me go that much faster. Within a few months, I went from 175 to 150 pounds (about 79 to 68 kg), and have kept it off. Now, this goes against the current "ketogenic" hypothesis, and is actually kind of puzzling, but I realize that butter makes things tasty, and I was just eating a lot less food overall because it was less pleasant. So it probably was a reduction in carbs. It took more than a year before I could enjoy a piece of toast without anything on it.
- GordonS 9y agoIf butter is the only thing you removed from your diet, you must have been eating an incredible amount of it?!
- gtrubetskoy 9y agoThere is _no_ amount of butter (or fat, in general) that you can eat that will make you gain weight, provided there is no sugar in your diet. You will physically not be able to eat more than your body can deal with, this is because fat, unlike sugar, triggers the i-am-full hormones which make food impossible to eat.
- y4mi 9y agoNo, that is plain wrong. Calories count, no matter where they are from. Ketogenic diets might increase your metabolism and reduce your appetite and hunger, which makes weight loss easier, but you'll still gain weight if you eat too many fat calories each day. Even if you cut out carbs entirely.
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- QAPereo 9y agoI hear these anecdotes in many forms, and in my experience the real shared causative factor is making a decision to change, and acting on it. I don't know if it matters what that change is, as long as it's healthy and changes the math of caloriesin - caloriesout. In other words, I wonder if it's the decision and willingness to make hard changes, rather than the specific nature of those changes, which is the real active ingredient in weight loss; I suspect so. Examples: Started walking. Started cycling. Cut out processed foods. Switched to a specific lifestyle diet. Took up some kind of sport. Cut out sugar/went Atkins/Keto/Paleo. I don't think there's a wrong way to break a series of bad habits and build new ones, and I think the hardest part is deciding to do it, and sticking with it.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoYou're likely correct in most situations. Some people have major hormone imbalances that may prevent weight loss (or make it difficult), like the article suggests, but for most people it's as simple as eating healthier and exercising. It's not sexy, new, or fun, so people are always looking for the magic bullet. I'm a sugar bug, I can buy a bag of Reese's and eat the entire thing without problem. When I eat more sugar, I gain weight, when I eat less, I lose weight, and exercise obviously has its natural results.
- ericabiz 9y agoHere's an anecdote the other direction. One of our employees decided to cut out fast food completely. Total weight loss in over 6 months of doing this? 0 pounds. Why? Because his at-home diet was still full of sugar and carbs (and he admitted as much..."I'll never give up bread!") Meanwhile, I did a low-carb "lazy Keto" diet where all I did was keep carbs under 20g net per day. I continued to eat fast food at least a couple times a week (I ate a lot of burgers with no buns.) Total weight loss? 25 pounds over 8 months, and have kept it off. I started the diet December 1 of last year, so it's now been almost a year. It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in, no matter how organic or home-cooked/homemade those carbs may be.
- Evgeny 9y agolow-carb "lazy Keto" diet where all I did was keep carbs under 20g net per day Looks like a strict keto to me, anything under 30g net carbs per day will put you into ketosis.
- freyr 9y agoThat's a remarkable effect. How much sugar were you consuming before you altered your diet? What were the main sources of sugar in your diet?
- jcoffland 9y agoI quit sugar over two years ago. It has had zero noticeable affect on my average weight. Dieting is the only way I've been able to keep my weight in check. Anecdotal evidence has little value.
- sebcat 9y agoI'm 17x cm and weigh 7x kg. I run (mostly 10K, completed a half-marathon recently) and lift weights semi-regularly. I have a relatively low sugar intake. I don't feel energetic at all. I get home from work and more or less lay down until I fall asleep. Gabriel Iglesias seems to be way more energetic than me. Jaggery seems to be 50% sucrose, and honey is mostly glucose and fructose. Shouldn't it have the same effect on blood sugar levels?
- ohnoesjmr 9y agoHad the same, was diagnosed with sleep apnea.
- ilamont 9y agoMore anecdata: * I did the same at the beginning of the summer, cutting out most processed sugar (glucose) and corn syrup while increasing fruit intake (but not by much). * I also starting skipping meals/moving meal times around, and eating less at dinner, but otherwise did not change the things that I ate. * I am exercising a lot less than before, owing to a foot injury in the middle of the summer. I've dropped nearly 20 pounds, from a starting point of just above 200 pounds to between 182 and 185 (varies by day). I think a decline in daily caloric intake owing to fewer sugary foods and smaller meal portions can explain the weight loss. I hope I can keep it up, because I do like sugar and because we have kids there is a lot around the house. I mentioned this to a relative who is a GI doctor and researcher and he says it's easier for men to lose weight than women through diet.
- neves 9y agoExercising less can also make you loose weight. Muscles are heavier than fat, if you loose them you'll get lighter.
- micahgoulart 9y agoConsider maybe cutting out your kids' sugar as well. No need for them to be eating all those sugary foods if you've found it to be unhealthy (and it is).
- craftyguy 9y agoYou must mean "stop having anything with added sugar" because humans need sugars to survive, nearly all food has natural sugars in it, and if you ate 0 grams of sugar for more than a couple of weeks you would die. I'm being a bit pedantic because it's important to understand that moderation is the key, not trying to completely eliminate one family of molecules from your diet.
- Evgeny 9y agoif you ate 0 grams of sugar for more than a couple of weeks you would die No you absolutely would not. Your body can synthesize glucose from protein and fat, you can survive indefinitely on zero sugar. This is called ketogenic diet.
- craftyguy 9y agoConsidering that many essential nutrients are provided by plants which also provide sugars, you'd have to eat synthetic 'food' in order to avoid all sugars.
- Evgeny 9y agoI guess technically you are right, even meat has some carbs in it because muscles hold some glycogen. The closest thing I can quote is the experiment that Vilhjalmur_Stefansson and Karsten Anderson took part in, eating only meat for a few years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson#Low-carbohydrate_diet_of_meat_and_fish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson#Low-carb... http://inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com.cy/2009/09/two-brave-men-who-ate-nothing-but-meat.html http://inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com.cy/2009/09/two-brave-m... In the end, the one-year project stretched to four years, during which time the two men ate only the meat they could kill and the fish they could catch in the Canadian Arctic. Neither of the two men suffered any adverse after-effects from their four-year experiment. It was evident to Stefansson, as it had been to William Banting, that the body could function perfectly well, remain healthy, vigorous and slender if it used a diet in which as much food was eaten as the body required, only carbohydrate was restricted and the total number of calories was ignored.
- trumpownsyou420 9y agodamn, you short niqqa.
- ikiris 9y agoHoney is made of sugar...
- chefkoch 9y agoCan you elaborate how much sugar you consumed on a daily basis?
- hiram112 9y agoAre you referring to 'sugar' or carbs?
- driverdan 9y agoIn other words you eliminated a significant portion of your daily calories, resulting in a net loss of calories per day. Had you been overeating something other than sugar (eg fried food) and eliminated that instead the outcome would have been the same.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- freyr 9y agoYour comment directly contradicts everything claimed in the article. Specifically, it makes the case that all calories are not created equal, and sugar in particular heavily impacts metabolism and fat accumulation. Whether this is true is up for debate, but you haven't brought any evidence to the table.
- pygy_ 9y agoI lost ~10Kg and all of my belly fat after cutting off cakes and cookies (the only sugary things left in my diet). I still eat plenty of carbs though (bread/pasta/semolina/müesli/fruits and sometimes honey). I've stabilized at a weight slightly below the one I had when I was 18. It freaked me out initially, I didn't expect such a large (or any) drop.
- Fnoord 9y ago> I continued to take other natural sweeteners like jaggery and honey. The natural in sugar is irrelevant. Sugar is sugar; as in fructose is fructose, and glucose is glucose.
- fapjacks 9y agoI cut thirty pounds in four weeks (yes, thirty pounds in four weeks, the first twenty of which were gone in two) by making no change in my behavior or diet other than cutting out the sugar I was putting in my coffee. I drink coffee all day long as a programmer, and used quite a ton of sugar. Double or triple what you're thinking. Anyway, the only change I made was cutting out that sugar, and I dropped thirty pounds in four weeks.
- cheald 9y agoGood for you! You should know, though, that this is primarily water weight lost, and it's common when first starting a diet. 30lbs of fat lost would be a caloric deficit of around 100k calories. Don't get discouraged if you can't replicate that result with further time. What's the change in your waist size been like?
- fapjacks 9y agoWell, I didn't start a diet. All I did was cut sugar. I did and still do run a couple of miles and lift weights a few times per week, and ate the same meals every day (because I buy in bulk and prepare them ahead of time). I track all my food and water intake and exercise activity with my Fitbit (unintentional plug). It was an environment with tightly controlled variables. Nothing in my routine changed except the subtraction of sugar from the coffee I was drinking.
- craptocurrency 9y agoWtf, tell something which we don’t know about.
- refurb 9y agoYou say you cut out sugars, but then mentioned using honey as a sweeter which is nearly 100% sugar and 40% fructose. I assume you mean you cut out white sugar? Sucrose?